The little things.

When my daughter was a little girl we drove through a prairie on a little dirt road. She looked up ahead and could not tell what the road was covered in. As we got closer it looked like brown plants. We stopped the car and there were thousands and thousands of brown tiny frogs. I have never in my life seen so many frogs. And we were now in a dilemma. How were we to turn around, keep going, or move at all without squishing hundreds of them. We couldn’t. We had to drive through them. No other choice. Water surrounded each side of the road, the prairie was flooded at the time. We had to drive over the frogs. We were both in tears. So my daughter grabbed something out of the back of the car and started saving as many as she could. The back of our car was always stocked full of supplies. If there was a stray dog, there was a bowl, a bottle of water, and another bowl with dog food, a towel, etc. So one of the bowls carried the little frogs. She decided to bring them home which was only a mile away to make sure they were safe. Every year, now, at the same time, we see a few little brown frogs. This year, 15 years later, I opened the mailbox and there were two brown tiny frogs. The mail man must have just put the mail right over them because there they were. We avoid the prairie road at this time for obvious reasons!

My daughter has always saved everything. So have I. Once when we were watching baby birds fly she was the one who spotted the black snake slithering through the grass to come for a baby that was floundering around on the ground. My daughter ran out stomping the ground to scare the snake away. She had to save those baby birds. Because of the snake we were committed to hours and hours and hours of making sure each bird could fly away before leaving the front yard.

One year she decided she wanted a beta fish. So we got her a fish who she named Rainbow. Rainbow lived a very long life for a betafish but his ending was sad. He got some eye infection and his last few days were not so good. She was so upset over that fish. We had a huge ceremony when he died. He has a gravestone in the back yard where he was buried! Next she decided that Rainbow was lonely so she now wanted two betafish. You cannot put two together so we were told to get two females and put a partition in the tank to keep them apart. One night we went to dinner. Came home. Each fish was on her correct side of the tank and each were missing their tails. Diamond and Sparkle were now tailless. But they survived! Who knows which side they fought on then leapt back over into their own prospective sides. So we ventured out to get two separate tanks that were close enough to see each other for them not be lonely but not so close that they could jump from one to the other. They spent all day bowed up at each other showing off. Then my daughter thought they must be exhausted showing off all day so she made a barrier to put between the tanks to give each fish a rest from each other for a few hours a day. I am pretty sure having those fish was far more exhausting than ever having dogs.

Seeing lizards trapped in between the window and the screeen is the worst. These windows are impossible to pull out so you can get to the top of the screen. But this process happens to save the poor starving lizard. Not just for her. It bothers me just the same.

An earth worm drying out in the sun on the sidewalk….painful to see. A tree frog caught in the house in dust under the stove, impossible to see. A dragonfly fluttering inside a light bowl on the ceiling…..must be saved.

This is how my daughter and I are. About tiny little things. So imagine how we feel when we see a starving child, a starving animal, a war torn country, etc. It causes actual physical pain. But being able to feel that kind of empathy comes from a deep capacity to love. It is why I became a chaplain. It is why I did wildlife rehab. It is why I adopted two rescue dogs that were dumped. It is why I started my blog, because the idea that others were suffering after abuse, alone, made me want to do something.

I don’t think it matters how big or how small your act of kindness is. How big or small your act of love is. But I do think every little act does matter. You may not be able to act on a global level or even a State level, or even a city level. Your act may be so tiny that you think it goes completely unnoticed. It did not go unnoticed by the one on the receiving end of your act of kindness. Every single act of kindness matters.

I know not everyone will go to such extremes with a lizard, or a betafish, or an earthworm. We are all different in who we choose to love and help. I don’t think the who is what matters. What matters is looking outside of ourselves and in our capacity to love, and in our ability to feel, using that to help another being. Whether it is giving a bowl of water to a stray dog or traveling to Africa to dig a well, every act of love matters.

What a beautiful story. My eyes were so brimful of tears I was barely able to read to the end. Still, the point by then was made in technicolor. Empathy: what’s stopping us, since it’s by far the better choice? What are we afraid to lose? Thank you.

Hi, I don’t know if you will receive this – but your blog page says “Comments are closed”

Yes, still blogging. Did I somehow lose you somewhere along the way? I’ve had some fun switching from MS Windows to Linux Ubuntu OS, learning new apps, etc. but will worth the effort – I despised Windows 10.

What on earth!!!! Does it say comments closed on all of my blogs or just this one? I think I lost you somewhere along the way and rediscovered you when I was looking through old comments. I do have to approve comments now since I had a few trolls but I did not know my comments were closed. Still learning after 2 years of blogging. Thanks!

Hey, I found out I’d lost you too, and re-followed today…????? Anyway, yes, it does say “comments are closed” on this page, so “commenting” via email. The last email I sent ended up as a comment. Was that automatic, or did you put it there yourself? If this works, well then, good enough for me. There is another blog I follow called “THE CONVICTIONS” ( http://wp.me/p5hPZj-6Z ) and I can’t comment there either. I can write a comment, but when I go to post the screen darkens… and the comment disappears. When I try to re-post (I usually copy any comment in case something happens and it enters a WordPress black hole) it tells me that I’ve already said that. Well… duhhhhh! So, methinks that WordPress is making more unnecessary changes to their formats again and leaving us like the proverbial mushrooms: in the dark, eating bullshit.

YES!!! Good choice!!!!!
Side note!!!! I have been trying to comment on your posts for weeks and it always says “error” and I keep wondering. Do you get the comments or do they never make it. I sent one to the dishwasher one like 20 times so I figure you got 20 of the same message or none. And then you wrote one yesterday? I think and I replied to that about but it also said error. Are you getting any comments from me?

I got the one on the dishwasher post, but only one. I wasn’t really sure what you meant about trying to comment but assumed it meant I wasn’t going through. I haven’t gotten any others recently that I can recall. When I use the WordPress app I get the error message all the time. It’s so frustrating, I hardly use it anymore. If I want to comment, I go on my computer. Glad to know it’s not just me. Let me know if you figure out a solution

It said it didnt go through so i wrote a few more and it said none went through so i though, oh boy you are gonna wake up to like 20!!!! Ok glad one went through then. Didn’t want you to think I wasnt reading your blog!

Oh my gosh I just tried to reply to your reply on your dishwasher blog an dit wouldnt let me!!!!argggg. I know it is the word press app because i got multiple messages of the same message from each person who commented on my blog today. Stupid app. Well. But ….what if i had words of brilliance!!! Now lost in cyberspace somewhere 🙂

Listen, i know beyond a shadow of a doubt i fixed all the worlds problems in that one message i sent to you and now we will never know the wonderous (this is trying to autocorrect that word but I think it is a word) thought my brain had!!!!
I think i will try to sign in to my acccount on google and see if i can comment on yours that way, not through the app.

Well, I am talking to you right now through the app, so it’s working… Sort of. For the past week, it won’t remove my notifications even when I check them. So my app shows that I have 30 notifications and when I click on it there are ones I’ve already looked at but they’re still shadowed like they haven’t been seen. First world problems😉

Me too!! Night night! I’m guessing since it said error it is bc I am on my ipad and it is this freaking app that freaking sucks. Either way….I read your post yesterday and I was feeling for you. And I used to do Reiki and I understood what you meant about how people say this is a process and we move forward and sometimes things get worse adn everythign seems like it should make sense but blah blah because it is all terribly painful. So i understand.

It ended up in my spam. I just found it!!!!!
You can comment on mine but I have to approve it. Which I usually do as soon as I see it but it keeps the mean away.
But on many i will leave a long comment and it just goes away. Where it should say waiting moderation or something. Who knows what the heck wordpress does.